Problem Definition: Instant return credit (in short, return-credit) is a new FinTech service that offers a store credit immediately upon a return claim, without requiring the return to be received. Improving consumers’ budget, this helps convert online returns into new sales, but it also...

We analyze lending by traditional as well as FinTech lenders during COVID-19. Comparing samples of FinTech and bank loan records across the outbreak, we find that FinTech companies are more likely to expand credit access to new and financially constrained borrowers after the start of the...

This paper analyse banking sector earnings management using loan loss provisions in the Fintech era. The findings show evidence for bank income smoothing using loan loss provisions. There is greater income smoothing in the second-wave Fintech era compared to the first-wave Fintech era, and the...

The SBPC found that companies' use of information on credit applicants' education history resulted in ‘educational redlining,’ penalizing borrowers who attended minority-serving institutions. In response to our findings, five United States Senators wrote to a range of companies involved in...

This technical note is structured in the following manner. Section two provides an overview of the main barriers and frictions that SMEs face to access finance. Section three explores how digitization is an enabler for SME finance and how different fintech solutions address these barriers. The...

Fintechs are believed to help expand credit access to underserved consumers without taking on additional risk. We compare the performance efficiency of LendingClub's unsecured personal loans with similar loans originated by banks. Using stochastic frontier estimation, we decompose the observed...

For the emerging peer-to-peer (P2P) lending markets to survive, they need to employ credit-risk management practices such that an investor base is profitable in the long run. Traditionally, credit-risk management relies on credit scoring that predicts loans' probability of default. In this...